I'm worried about eggs...

Not the silly worry some people have that they might be bad for you, I'm worried there might not be enough eggs to go round.

Eggs of many colours, from my small farmyard flock. But, in all honesty, they taste pretty much the same….simply LOVELY.

Is there any food as versatile as the egg? It’s obviously a rhetorical question, because NOTHING beats an egg as far as I am concerned. On their own they are a meal - boiled, poached, fried, scrambled or in a omelette. They are simple to cook, taste great and need only the minimum of other ingredients to produce a whole recipe book full of more complex meals.

I'm not just a tad prejudiced in favour of eggs - I’m an egg evangelist. I know there are some sad souls out there who will claim they don’t like them, can’t stomach them or believe they will cause them harm. But they are very much in the minority. When I was a youngster there was a TV advert campaign which plugged the phrase “Go to work on an egg” and round the world that’s precisely what billions of people do.

But for how much longer?

I am writing this on a visit to the USA where eggs are a major part of the national political debate right now. Whatever President Trump thinks, the really hot topic in American households isn't Greenland, or DEI or retaking the Panama Canal. It's the cost of breakfast and in particular of eggs.

Americans eat enormous numbers of eggs - 270 each per year, on average, which makes the supermarket price of a dozen yolkers so crucial that any price hike has an immediate affect on the US economy. Eggs are a major component of the national shopping “basket”, which economists use to calculate the rate of inflation and inflation affects every business and Government decision in the USA. Last month the “eggconomy" was the reason why US official inflation went above 3% - a hugely significant number to the Government bankers and a bloody nose for the economic claims of President Trump. Which is why, in his speech to Congress, he tried to lay the blame for egg price rises on the Democrats and particularly on his predecessor.

It seems an easy attack to make stick. Eggs have gone up from $3.82 to approaching $8 a dozen in the last year and most of that rise happened in the dying months of Biden's Presidency. Supermarkets are rationing eggs. Prices are spiralling. Farmers are going broke. It's a national crisis.

But it's a lie to blame the Democrats. The true cause is a massive shortage of eggs resulting from Avian flu which has wiped out 50 million chickens - 15 per cent of the American flock - and reduced the availability of eggs to crisis levels. Elsewhere in the world Avian flu is also taking a new grip, including the UK where there have been outbreaks in three regions. The disease is becoming more common and this is why I am starting to seriously worry for the future of eggs in our diet.

I particularly love egg cookery. I have a few much thumbed egg recipe books, favourite of which is writtten by celebrity Michel Roux - late and lamented uncle of Michel Roux Jr. He says - and he’s spot on - “An egg is a treasure chest of substances which are essential for a balanced diet - rich in proteins, lipids, vitamins, minerals. When I hold an egg in my hand I feel it represents the image of the universe and increases my respect for life”. Purple prose maybe, but he’s right!

As an enthusiastic egg consumer, I have for a long time tried to be self-sufficient in eggs. It helps, of course, that I live somewhere I can keep my own hens. When I was a town-dwelling youngster most of our neighbours kept hens - a hangover from World War Two, when self-sufficiency was all important. If your garden was too small to make much of a contribution to the veg-growing Dig for Victory campaign, most people could keep a few hens in a run and feed them on kitchen scraps. (Don’t try the kitchen scraps trick now - it’s seriously illegal. In fact, the rules are so strict that while you can feed domestic hens on vegetables grown in your garden, if you take the veg inside your house first, you then cannot take the trimmings - or any of the leftover cooked veg - outside for your chickens. It sounds bonkers and maybe it is, but that’s a discussion for another time).

Much later in life, I bought a small farm and as I looked around the farmyard one morning I felt that something was missing. Thinking back to my summer visits to farms owned by my Dad's farming relatives in Shropshire I suddenly realised what it was - a farm just doesn't look like a farm without some hens scratching about.

I resolved to have hens - but I made mistakes along the way. The first was deciding that looks were the most important factor. If I was having hens to decorate the farmyard I wanted the best-looking hens I could find. So I dropped in to a chicken supplier and I picked a random dozen, based entirely on their looks. There were a couple of Sussex - stout and white with mottled grey necks and bright red crops and jowls. I picked two Marans - clothed in elegant white and grey haut couture, as you would expect from hens of French extraction. I included a couple of Arancunas, tall and a bit skinny, of rather anonymously appearance blue-grey, but I was promised BLUE eggs - who could resist?

However, the best-lookers are certainly not the best layers. Quite the opposite in most cases. Some breeds would go for many weeks without fulfilling their end of the deal. And when they did, they often ignored the fancy coup - with its cosy laying boxes which I regularly upholstered with sweet, fresh straw. Instead I would find piles of eggs laid in the most unlikely places - often under bushes a great distance from their coup and once in the bowels of my hay-baler which spent the winter in a dark corner of the barn.

My first hens. I went for the most attractive hens, but they turned out to be the worst layers.

However, even the slyest hen is no match for a determined hen keeper with a lust for his breakfast eggs and over the years our farmyard flock and their successors have provided us with more than enough fresh eggs, with gloriously-hued yolks, at not very much cost other than the pain of trying to keep them safe from the local foxes. Other than the deepest winter months they even find most of their own food, aided by a symbiotic relationship with the sheep which make up most of our farm population. Hens seem to know just how long to let sheep droppings mature before they turn into mini-hampers packed with juicy bugs and are worth an energetic scratch.

My hens would lay anywhere but in the expensive coup I bought them - these were hidden under a hedge

Most of the world sadly does not have the privilege of owning a pick-your-own egg supply and has to rely on industrial farming for their eggs. And boy, do the world’s farmers produce an enormous crop of eggs.

If I was to guess which country in the world liked eggs the most, I would have bet good money on it being America - eggs are the heart of the great American breakfast after all. And they are a key ingredient of all those cakes and muffins Americans like so much. It all adds up to about 16 KILOS of eggs per American per year.

But you have to look East to find the real champion egg eaters. Nobody consumes more eggs per person than the Japanese. 320 a year on average. Partly it’s because of their obsession with noodles. But China beats all-comers when it comes to the national total. Across the nation they consume 31 MILLION TONS of eggs annually. It’s probably the country’s leading source of protein and the Government has a policy of keeping egg prices low to satisfy its shoppers.

What about the UK? We are about half way down the world chart at 11.4 kg a year each, behind France at 13kg and the top EU consumer nation, Germany, at 15.9 kg.

However, the randomness of nature is threatening all our egg supplies. For several years various strains of Avian flu have stalked the chicken farms of the world and the disease has moved gradually from Asia through Europe and America. Everywhere costs are spiralling. Most nations tackle Avian flu by a policy of destroying every flock where even a single bird is affected. And farmers not hit by the disease face new regulations on hygiene, which leaves them with big bills for chemicals and protective clothing.

This, to return to my opening remark, is why I am worried about eggs. There is a serious danger they may no longer remain the ubiquitous and economical protein on which the world relies.

But whatever America's new President says, there is nothing politics can do to fix this crisis. When the current Avian flu outbreak is over, production will slowly return to normal and prices will fall again. Mr. Trump, having pinned the blame on somebody else, will undoubtedly claim the credit for price drops and inflation easing, and the politically naive may well believe him. Meanwhile the opposition will be left with egg on their faces.

All this worry about eggs is giving me an appetite so I am off to make myself a boiled egg snack. It will certainly be a two-egger. As the very old joke goes - one egg is never an oeuf.